College Basketball Game Includes Halftime Mile

Halftime at sporting events like football and basketball games can be tedious in places that can’t afford Beyonce and all her pyrotechnics. Did you ever sit in one of those arenas and think, “Wouldn’t it be cool if right about now a track meet broke out”?

It does--briefly, anyway--annually, at the University of Portland, where the Chiles Center, used for home basketball games, has a three-lap, six-and-then-some-laps-to-the-mile track around its upper mezzanine. A Halftime Mile there has become, according to the university’s Portland Pilots website, “one of the most popular in-game promotions.”

After all, it requires only a little more than four minutes of the audience’s attention. On Thursday night, the Pilots promoted a race featuring “Portland freshman Izaic Yorks, whose 4:04 time in the 1,600-meter run was tops among all high school runners nationally last year.”

Yorks ended up winning the Halftime Mile in 4:15.74, with Weston Strum of Loyola Marymount second in 4:15.79. The Bowerman AC’s Jesse McChesney, part of one of Oregon’s royal running families, was eighth in 4:22.53. Despite the strength of Portland’s distance programs, it’s likely more people saw Yorks triumph on Thursday than at any of his track meets.

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